Follow the snails: The new Slow Food guide marks the trail of sustainable choices with red snail symbols.

Follow the snails: The new Slow Food guide marks the trail of sustainable choices with red snail symbols.

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Photo: CHRISTINA KOCI HERNANDEZ

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In praise of local Slow Food

Snails move very, very slowly through the world -- and they love to eat, as any Bay Area gardener knows from painful experience. So they're the international symbol for Slow Food, the worldwide group devoted to keeping our food clean, honest and sustainable.

In the new "Slow Food Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area," a slime-free trail of small red snail symbols points out the restaurants, markets and bars that do a particularly good job of reflecting the group's values.

Naturally, slow food pioneers and models like Chez Panisse and Zuni Cafe are there. But so are the 99 Ranch market in Richmond, the Albatross Pub in Berkeley, Oddlots wine store in Albany, and San Francisco's Mi Lindo Yucatan and R&G Lounge restaurants.

Cuisines from other countries are well represented, from Kabul Afghan Restaurant in Sunnyvale to the taco trucks of East Oakland.

Few of these earn red snails, but the guide's introduction applauds their " 'Slow' adherence to tradition."

Cheese stores, coffee bars, tea rooms, bakeries -- the snails have sampled their way through the entire Bay Area food scene and describe their favorites.

The guide's editors are three local Slow Food stalwarts: Sylvan Brackett, who is Alice Waters' assistant; Sue Moore, proprietor of the Let's Be Frank grass-fed hot dog cart outside SBC Park and a meat forager for Chez Panisse; and Wendy Downing, a chef and food publicist who recently moved from San Francisco to Portland.

Eighty-three local food people contributed, including Karola Saekel of The Chronicle Food section.

This is the third Slow Food U.S.A. city guide, after New York and Chicago.

Salt and pepper rarely get much respect. They're usually noticed only when there's too much, or not enough, in a dish.

But at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, salt and pepper stars in a special eight-course tasting menu ($100) from chef Ron Siegel.

Each dish is built to show off an exotic salt and a different variety of pepper. For example, Kauai sea salt and pink peppercorns season a starter of Dungeness crab wrapped in lobster carpaccio. Tahitian vanilla sea salt and Muntock white pepper spice up seared tuna belly. A rib-eye steak gets a grating of pink Bolivian rock salt, along with Szechuan peppercorns.

Even the Meyer lemon ice cream and pastry dessert gets a sprinkle of applewood-smoked sea salt and Tasmanian pepper.

Salt and pepper are critical flavor elements, but "they're often taken for granted," Siegel says. He confesses a minor obsession with them -- especially the various salts. "I can sit there in the kitchen and start eating salt," he says.

Bear Naked's new breakfast offerings just may win over whole grain skeptics.

The Connecticut company has won acclaim for its "all natural" granola flavors that eschew trans fat, refined sugar, cholesterol and high-fructose corn syrup. Now it's bringing the same approach to instant cereals.

Food section staffers approved of the nice texture and flavor balance of the banana nut, peach and nut, and triple berry instant oatmeal packets (pictured), which use freeze-dried ingredients.

The cold cereals, which come in triple berry crunch and vanilla almond crunch, had 3 grams of fat and 3 grams of sugar, compared to 5 grams of each in the granola version. Tasters praised the crunch, but a few wanted more sweetness.

The only complaint? The 1/4-cup serving size wasn't always enough to satisfy.

Frozen oatmeal sounds a little silly. But don't knock it until you try it.

What sets Trader Joe's frozen cereal apart from other forms of instant or microwaveable oatmeal is the inclusion of steel-cut oats, which account for a sturdy texture that's in marked contrast to the baby-food softness of the other products.

The Canadian-made microwavable cereal (nuke on high 2 minutes, stir, cook 2 minutes longer) is lightly accented with brown sugar and maple syrup, again setting it apart from other quick oatmeals, which tend to be cloyingly sweet.

There are two large hockey pucks of frozen oatmeal to a package, each making a substantial serving for one, or a modest one for two. At $1.59 (at Trader Joe's stores), it may be a little costlier than shelf-stable packets, but this is a healthful breakfast you can really sink your teeth into. -- Karola Saekel